In 2012, it was painted the gorgeous Synergy Green color that you see now. Two years later, Laflower was attending a car show in his hometown of Huntington, Indiana when he happened upon Adam Hodson, who turned him onto the idea of swapping an LS engine into the Javelin to boost — some pun intended — its performance. By that time, low-buck enthusiasts had been exploiting the impressive capabilities and reliability of GM’s LS engine platform in stock form for a number of years; Hodson, part of Team 260, a group of enthusiasts from in and around Fort Wayne, Indiana who had taken a collective liking to the platform, convinced Laflower it was a cheap and proven path to get his AMC where he wanted it, performance-wise.
As any of the AMC faithful can attest, finding original or remanufactured parts to build a true red, white, and blue AMC powerplant to run into the eights is no simple or affordable task. Laflower noted that one racer he ran across at a recent all-AMC event in Ohio disclosed having $5,000 invested in a set of cylinder heads alone. Laflower meanwhile, with the guidance of Hodson and Team 260, spent only a few hundred dollars on a 5.3-liter GM engine lifted from the junkyard. Paired with an S475 turbo, he was able to push right into the nines — no costly cylinder heads or bottom end assembly work necessary.